Courses

This workshop is for animators who want to develop their cartoony animation skills. The “cartoony” style has a long heritage from the earliest days of animation to modern examples like “Hotel Transylvania”, “Storks”, and the emotions in “Inside Out”. Over time animators have honed techniques to push the pose, energy, flexibility, timing and spacing of character movement. This workshop explores those techniques and gives participants new ways to incorporate cartoony animation into their own work.

In this hands-on workshop the short in-class exercises are 50% hand-drawn and 50% CG. Mark teaches observational drawing that is useful in studying from clips of master animators and planning animation, no matter what your drawing skills are. Animators of any drawing skill level are welcome.

The workshop will cover the following:

Pose & animation master studies.

Shape change with energy and flexibility.

What to look for in a cartoony breakdown.

2D previs in the 3D workflow.

Cartoony movement analysis: spacing, takes, impacts, scrambles, etc.

Tutor Info:

Mark Oftedal has worked in animation for over 20 years. He has served as a feature animator (Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2), a traditional animation director (The Pumpkin of Nyefar), cofounder of a 3D software service provider (DigitalFish), and as a Google Spotlight Story director/animator/artist (A Windy Day, Buggy Night, On Ice, Piggy). Mark also teaches at various studios around the world (Technicolor, ILM Singapore, Atomic Cartoons) and runs a cartoony workshop at Animation Mentor.

This workshop is aimed at both animation graduates and professionals wishing to expand their cartoony animation skills. Knowledge of Maya is recommended but not required. You may do all of the exercises in 2D if you wish. Drawing experience is not required. We will use wacoms to draw with at the workshop but have a limited number of them. If participants have a wacom or other tablet, we ask that you bring it with you.